Electric Utility plans new lines for Low Gap, airport

Improvements to the city's electric system near Ukiah High School and the Ukiah Municipal Airport are just part of the Ukiah Electric Utility's plans for the near future, Director Mel Grandi told the Ukiah City Council this week.

At Tuesday's meeting on the Fiscal Year 2013-14 budget, Grandi told the council his approximately $15.5 million budget included plans to rebuild the main feeder on Low Gap Road, from Bush Street to the high school.

"There's no back-up for that, which is why the county has had 12-hour outages three times since I've been here, (which is) unacceptable," he said. "We're fixing that with this budget."

Grandi said he has $70,000 budgeted for that project, which is scheduled to be completed by early next year. "We've begun the engineering already," he said.

While that feeder would be rebuilt, Grandi said he has wanted to install a new feeder for the southern part of Ukiah.

"Because of the load at the airport in the airport area and the load at the south end of town, I'm recommending installing a new feeder," Grandi said. "We already have it to Waugh Lane and East Gobbi Street, and I'm proposing to extend it all the way down the railroad tracks.

"I've already purchased easements, and we have the poles to build the line the rest of the way to the airport," he continued. "And that will reinforce the south end of town to ensure that we can pick up load during outages."

When Council member Mary Anne Landis asked if the lines would be underground, Grandi said they wouldn't. Since he has all of the materials already, Grandi said the project would cost only $20,000 worth of labor if the lines were overhead.

Vice Mayor Phil Baldwin asked about the former substation on Orchard Avenue, which is across the street from the new one at the southwest corner of East Gobbi Street and South Orchard Avenue, "and when can we sell the land at those two corners?"

"I am not sure," Grandi said. "Hopefully sooner rather than later, and I am working on a plan."

Grandi lists his utility's accomplishments over the past five years as including:

Replacing connectors: "We've had about 10 connector failures and one wire failure," Grandi said, explaining to the council that he's replacing the large, clunky "T-Bodies" that can be easily separated with streamlined "splices."

Installed 134 LED streetlights, "which cut the energy use in half," thanks to a grant from the federal government, and added 16 additional lights along State Street

Built a double circuit from the Orchard Avenue substation out to Main and East Perkins streets.

Redesigned and installed primary system to Highland Drive area:

"We had a failure earlier in the year and it took us several months to get a good design and get the necessary easements," Grandi said, explaining that a modern transformer was installed.

New McDonald's:

"Simple little job, McDonald's -- except it required us to tear up the street and put in a temporary line," Grandi said. "It was a major undertaking that took two weeks, which would normally take a day."

Tree trimming: "Last year we had $100,000 in the budget to do 1,100 trees. This year we have about $115,000. We've expanded a little bit to do some of the secondary work. (The high-voltage is the primary)."

Orchard Substation: "We built a substation that allows us to double the city's size ... and uses Dark Sky' lighting, LED lighting, so it's quite a bit different than most substations."

Backbone feeder upgrades: "We had to do some because of the new substation; we also had to build some of the systems inside the city," he said.

Tested, replaced wood poles: "We've tested all the poles in the system, and to-date we've replaced all the must-replace poles,'" he said. "We're on pace to replace all the poles within five years, 20 percent per year, but we replaced all the critically bad poles."

Justine Frederiksen can be reached at udjjf@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @JustFrederiksen or at 468-3521.